Frederik Pohl's Blog, page 22

You can probably figure out where Ronald S. Lauder's $3.1 billion fortune came from — namely the relentless demand of many a woman to have Estee Lauder make her more beautiful than she already was. You would only be partly right, though. According to the New York Times, Ronald Lauder's fortune has been [...]

Think you're poor just because your annual income is below the poverty level? What about the people with less than half that? Why, they're the fastest-growing class in America, encompassing some 20.5 million people, or 6.7 percent of all Americans.
That's an all-time record. But keep going, Republican House of Representatives and Supreme Court. [...]

 


A stfnal Christmas carol by Jonathan Coulton.

 
Like almost everybody else, we have the habit, in our house, of celebrating birthdays, anniversaries and other significant events. The trouble is that a single day doesn't seem to be enough for some of the king-sized anniversaries we've been getting lately, so, in the interest of fair play, [...]

Harlan Ellison did not appear from nowhere. When he first began to show up in the sf magazines he had already been writing from an early age — had even had his work appear in as prestigious a magazine as The New Yorker, but had never really found his voice until the beginning [...]

TAD says he's tired of getting up-to-date scientific and political news from this blog, and can I recommend other sources?
I can tell you what I read every week, which is five weekly publications: Science, New Scientist, The New Yorker, the Sunday New York Times and Newsweek.
Science is mostly pretty technical. [...]

The most hopeful sign I have seen for the future of America is the flash flood of Occupiers that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, all over our land.
See, that's what the Common Man in the Street is supposed to do when somebody tries to destroy the American system that guarantees his freedoms. [...]

Who is Grover Norquist?
He's the lobbyist who invented the "I Swear I'll Never Vote for Any Tax Increase Ever" pledge, which is now paralyzing Congress.
How does his pledge do that?
Congress was created by the founding fathers as a place where representatives of the people of all parties and from every state could get together [...]

Dear Readers:
Today is my 92nd birthday, an age which gives me the privilege of asking for the kind of birthday present I would most like to get. That present is simply this: Please take this seriously.
As you can see, the letter below is addressed primarily to our American occupiers, since they're [...]

Dear Readers:
Tomorrow is my birthday, and if any of you would care to do me a birthday favor, there is one I would like to request from you. In tomorrow's post, I want to try an experiment. I would be grateful if you would read it and take it seriously.
Thanks, and Happy Almost [...]

 
"Wherever you are on Earth, there is more life present than in the rest of the known universe."
—Robin Ince